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okay good afternoon everyone my name is
nick d’adezio i’m the marketing director
here at longwood gardens
thank you so much for joining us today
for our ask the experts series
which is a conversation with longwood’s
networks
of experts uh from around the region and
around the globe
um and it’s exclusively for our members
answering our members questions
about a range of home gardening topics
uh as the days become
shorter and summer continues to march
along
you may be thinking about how to get
more out of your vegetable garden
and today’s session is going to answer
all those questions
related to the late summer and fall
garden
joining us today to answer your
questions is jeff jabko
he’s the director of grounds and
coordinator of horticulture at scott
arboretum
and jeff’s also an instructor for our
education programs
so jeff welcome and thanks for joining
us today thanks nick good to be here
so jeff and i have received dozens of
your vegetable gardening questions
and we’re hoping to cover as much as
possible in today’s session
we’ve also enabled the q a function so
you can submit questions during the
session
uh feel free to submit them anytime and
and we’ll take them
uh wherever they make sense um we’re
gonna cover today
what to plant and when now into the fall
we’re going to talk about pests and
disease harvesting
care and preparation for the gardens in
the fall
we’re also recording today’s event so
we’ll make sure that that’s accessible
via our website
so you can access that later so with
that
jeff let’s get started so common
question
asked uh from a whole lot of our
attendees today
is what to plant in the late summer and
fall and when to plant them
so jeff can you uh describe a little bit
what might be best
oh sure sure um you know i’m always a
proponent of uh
successive sewing so i mean i think if
you’re going to be a successful
vegetable gardener this is something
that you
just normally do and once you kind of
get experience with it
you know that well you can plan in very
very early spring
so when you’re ripping out your early
lettuce that’s where you’re planting
your tomatoes and your peppers
and so you can keep reusing space within
your garden
uh because you know our time is limited
so
the larger vegetable garden you have
then the more reading you have to do the
more watering you have to do
so really be intensive about the space
that you use
i have a relatively small property
for vegetable gardening in that much of
the rest of my property either
is competition with big trees or
it’s not really where you want to have a
vegetable garden
so i’m kind of restricted to the south
side of my house which is a side yard
which is only 15 feet wide
so i really intensively use that space
so yeah i’m a big proponent of multiple
cropping and you know many crops in the
same space through the year
so for for um things for the fall garden
it’s different than when you’re thinking
about in spring
because in spring you’re starting with
plants you know so the early spring
crops you’re putting in
are ones that will germinate or grow in
cool weather cool soil conditions and
then
as the season begins to warm up
then the plants are really coming into
their maturity
for fall crops we’re working just in
reverse we’re starting now
when we have really high temperatures
and soil is very very warm
and then when we’re going to want to be
harvesting these plants
it’s as the days are getting cooler uh
and it’s not just that it also has to do
with day length
so you know we plant lettuce and spinach
things like that in the spring
and we know that you know by june you
know temperatures are warming up
but also day length is getting longer
and these are plants that normally they
would go to bolt
meaning that the what is that tuft of
foliage is going to send up a flower
stalk through the middle of it
and once that plant begins to send up
that flower stock
then typically the part that we want to
eat the leaves they start getting tough
they start getting
bitter and just really not palatable
when it gets to that point
well that triggering of that uh the
bolting or that flower stock coming up
is really triggered by day length now
the the palatability the bitterness
issue
that’s more of a heat issue a
temperature issue so as temperatures get
warmer you’re going to get those bitter
compounds being in the leaves
so we’re kind of working in reverse um
so days are going to be getting shorter
they’re going to be getting cooler
and at the very end of the season we
have to start thinking about frost
rather than starting with frost like we
do in the spring we’re thinking about
frost as we get later later later into
the season
so um there are crops that i’m going to
give you
what i think is a whole list and then
we’ll take a look at some more of the
details and some of the specific
restrictions on some of these
um one of my favorite crops for whether
it’s spring
summer fall you can kind of do repeated
sewings throughout
or bush beans i think you can get you
know a lot of
bang for your buck short space you can
see right behind me
yellow bush beans um really my favorite
because it’s very difficult to find
yellow beans most places you most
you know everyone’s familiar with green
beans but i really prefer
the yellow ones um so that’s a wonderful
crop
you know you need to get them in the
ground soon very easy to start from seed
other things that you can do and this is
in no well actually let me give you a
couple of the easiest ones to start with
lettuces all different types of lettuce
um
and the the important thing to consider
with
lettuce is that um you
really want to use a lettuce that
uh you can pay attention to what the
days to maturity are
so anytime you’re going to go online or
a seed packet it’s going to say the days
to maturity
there are some lettuces that are going
to take 60 70 days because they’re going
to form a head
if you have something like a leaf
lettuce you can be picking
really small leaves of leaf lettuce in
three to four weeks
okay so you pay attention when i say
lettuce there’s a whole range of
different types of lettuce
so you can pick ones that will be best
for you
one of the best things that i’ve learned
is with lettuce
romaine lettuce also called cause
lettuce you know it gets
kind of a tall head and has the big
big leaves that are more upright on it
now that’s a lettuce that it takes
longer to get to maturity
but i have kept that lettuce in my
garden almost until christmas time
we can have a a frost or a freeze uh
in that lettuce is still in the garden
and it will look just
awful the leaves will be wilted and
everything when you see it in the
morning
and by the time the temperatures in the
afternoon warm up above freezing
it is perfectly fine so it can really
handle
those now if you got temperatures in the
low 20s maybe even the mid-20s
it might be too cold and you’ll begin to
have some tips of the leaves eye back
but it’s not going to kill the whole
thing so that’s a great one that i would
plant and then not
harvest until i get into late october
late october november maybe even early
december
but some of the other ones the butter
crunch types the
leaf lettuces salad bowl lettuce those
types of things
you can be seeding them now all the way
and keep seeding them
for some of them all the way up through
late september or october
they really grow well in cool weather
any of the greens so mustard greens
swiss chard
arugula mizuna uh a lot of the
asian greens all really good and many of
those have really really short time
periods too
some of the other things uh some of the
other asian greens like pok
choy bok choy uh some of those types of
things
very easy to grow really short season
type plants
and for some of these things it some of
them are more of a challenge to grow in
the spring
because the plants will they can
germinate in cool weather
they’ll begin to grow and then as we
start getting the longer days and warmer
temperatures
they want to bolt and go to seed and
then you lose kind of the quality of the
plant
well we don’t have that issue going into
the fall because we’re getting cooler
temperatures and we’re getting shorter
days
so for many of you they can some many of
these can handle the light frost
so it’s actually a better quality like i
always would try to grow broccoli rub
i love this it’s a really bitter green
italian cuisine uses it in quite a bit
of things mixed in with pasta
or on a roasted pork sandwich or
whatever and it kind of get you kind of
stir fry it with some olive oil and
garlic
it’s a really nice thing it gets this
tiny little broccoli
head on top which is only you know just
like that that large in diameter
but you eat the leaves and the stem of
that and it’s it’s bitter so it’s kind
of an
acquired taste what i say to people um
but when i try to grow it in the spring
i’ll be getting that
stock come up with that flour bud which
is when you want to harvest it while
it’s still in bud
but very very quickly it opens up into
the flour and once the flour begins to
open
it’s not the quality of when that’s
still in bud so it looks like
a broccoli like you would eat
and so in the fall it’s much easier
because it’s cooler temperatures
and it’s going to take longer until it
wants to flower
so just by having it just grow like that
and then it gives you a longer period of
time for harvesting
um other things that are great for the
fall
beets red beets or golden beets you know
you can plant them in the spring you can
let them in the ground for a longer time
and you can be harvesting nice big beets
but you plant them now through probably
early september
and you can be harvesting nice little
tender really succulent little beets
uh endive one of my favorite crops for
fall
endive is one of those things if you
grow planted in the spring
if you wait until a little too late to
harvest it the leaves get really really
tough
they’re very chewy and they’re very very
bitter you plant it this time of year
and in the fall
it actually gets tender it’s crunchy it
doesn’t have that bitterness
and sometimes people actually blanch it
where they kind of cover it so that it
kind of gets white in the center
um great great fall crop and that’s
another one
you can keep it out after frost it’ll
look awful in the morning
after the frost and then it will warm up
and look perfectly fine
um radishes your radishes you can have
rat plant
radishes from seed you could be
harvesting radishes in three weeks
so you can keep a success of sowing
those through the fall
uh spinach is a really good one for fall
and once again like with lettuce for
spinach they’re all different types of
spinach
depending on you whether you want to
harvest them as little micro greens or
small greens
or you want the the big shiny uh green
leaves or you want the rounded green
leaves
and many different days for harvesting
too so pay attention to those
there’s still time for planning turnips
and as with
um the uh red beets uh turnips
you could have planted them earlier and
let them to get to be a large size
or you can plant them even later on and
you’ll just be harvesting as a much
smaller
more tender more mild flavored turnip
um peas some people recommend planting
peas for the fall
um i’ve never had great success with
that
i think because peas really like cool
weather for their whole time
of growing and here we’re trying to get
peas established while the soil is still
really really warm so it’s a little
difficult
um so those are things all those things
i just listed are relatively easy to
grow from seed
but the most important thing i think to
pay attention is
getting that seed to germinate because
okay
here in swarthmore last night we had
eight tenths of an inch of rain
okay a week and a half ago almost two
weeks ago we had four inches of rain
so we had and we had nothing in between
so we had these big spells
in between when we’re getting these
thunderstorms so
even though there was moisture down in
the soil we’ve had temperatures in the
upper 80s and 90s
all of that time in between we really
have had for the past four weeks
so the soil surface really dries out and
when you’re planting these seeds you
know they are
all within the top half an inch or so of
soil and
you know you can water it in the morning
and by the middle of the afternoon
soil is going to be dry again and that
doesn’t work well for getting seeds to
germinate they want even kind of
constant moisture
so you have to pay attention to that
when you sow the seed
either you put a fine sifting of compost
or something over top to help hold in
the moisture
or what i used to do and actually i
learned this from my uncle
is get a piece of burlap and when you
water you
wet the burlap so the burlap will
actually shave the soil
and also it helps hold some moisture in
on that now
once you begin to see the first of those
seeds germinate you need to remove that
burlap and then pay attention to your
watering twice a day just a light
sprinkling because as soon as those tiny
little seedlings dry out
they’re going to die you know and when
you have temperatures of 95 degrees and
no rain
it takes no time at all for that top you
know half an inch of soil or so to dry
out
so that’s the biggest challenge for
starting seed
directly sown in the vegetable garden in
the summertime
as you begin to get more into september
if you still want to be planting lettuce
or something then
it’s usually easier days are shorter
temperatures are cooler
you have a rain the moisture is going to
last in the soil longer
but july and august it’s a bit of a
challenge
so you really have to pay attention to
the watering
so your other option is going to be
starting from transplants now you can go
to some good garden centers and you can
buy transplants now
for good fall crops so you might find
cabbage you might find broccoli
cauliflower collards maybe even some
brussels sprouts although i would say
it’s probably a little late for brussels
sprouts
but all the other things so broccoli
cauliflower collards cabbage
and maybe some other things that you can
find still as
available as transplants new some might
have some different types of lettuce and
things like that
all of those you want to plant and
usually i figure by
mid to late july is the last time for
kind of like getting those to get them
established in the garden once again
it’s a transplant you have to pay
attention to watering
you can’t go away for a weekend in
weather like this and think that they’re
going to be fine on their own
so that’s the big challenge for that
so there’s just a range of vegetables
you shouldn’t even think about
for starting now unless you already have
plants established
uh but even so even if you had young
plants established for
tomatoes or eggplant um
many of the the longer season squashes
um melons peppers those types of things
you really shouldn’t consider uh trying
to
you’re just not going to have enough of
time and those are crops
for flowering and for fruiting they
really want warm weather and as we’re
getting into cooler weather
we’re not going to have that now i have
you know tomatoes i set the transplants
out in may
and those tomatoes will keep producing
to me until heavy frost so i usually
have them in my garden through october
maybe even into november or something
depending on when we get that killing
frost
so i’ll still have tomatoes then but the
tomatoes aren’t ripening as well
they aren’t ripening as quickly and even
if they do kind of ripen they’re not
like not like a a tomato that ripens in
august and early september they just
don’t have the flavor
that the other ones do because they’ve
been grown in cooler temperatures
and shorter days so that’s a lot
of uh of different ones and nick maybe
this is a time when i should share my
screen and we talk about
this so here is uh um
here’s i’m gonna post this in chat right
now
this is something that i found on the
website for johnny’s selected seeds and
i didn’t put a link in here but if you
just google johnny’s selected seeds
and look for their growers library
um there’s a on and then under that
over on the right-hand side it says
online tool calculator
and let me show you this one that i uh
have found very very useful let’s see
this is the one
here okay
so let me get to the top of this this is
uh it’s a planting calculator for fall
harvest crops okay
if you look at this middle column you
can see my cursor
right nick we can okay so you put in
your see the date i have here is october
20th
and you have to put in a year for some
reason you have to put in a year
so you enter your average first frost
date for your area
so remember you’re working in reverse
many times when you’re planning in the
garden you’re thinking about
okay what is my last potential frost
date in the springtime
okay but here you have to put in what
you think is
your first frost date for the fall and
you can just
um google this online you can find out
you just
there are all different types of frost
date calculators
you just put in your zip code and it’ll
tell you what your expected frosts
are okay so um if for this area
it was giving me a time of sometime
between
october 15 and november 1st
so i just put in october 20th and for
some reason on this one you have to put
in a year so i just put in last year
and then it will give you this whole
list of potential crops you see here on
the left
that could be crops for the second half
of the vegetable gardening season
okay so there you can see everything
kind of in alphabetical order
of crops that you could be doing that
and then it gives you a day here of when
to plant
now if you look at the asterisk and you
look down here in this right column
the double asterisk the date calculated
is a date to plan
outdoors crosses should be direct sewn
or marked ds so if you look over here in
the list of crops
it either has a ds or a tp
tp would be there or plants are set out
as transplants
so these are ones that you would want to
start the seed indoors
then set it out as a transplant now if
you’re doing a transplant those seeds
should be started about four weeks
before the date that’s listed here so if
you look here at the broccoli
which is up here near the top it says oh
okay here
july 28th this is the date that you
would want to set out the transplants so
july 28th
but it’s too late if you’re going to be
starting these from seed at your home
you need to buy the transplants and get
these out because you should have
started these seeds
june 28th give them four weeks of growth
before you plant them out july 28th so
that’s what this
is all here so if you look down here if
you wanted to plant celery from a
transplant
whoops sorry you’re too late it should
have been planted by the fourth of july
okay but you could still put out
transplants here of cauliflower
carrots you could still direct seed
they’re saying you need to do this by
the 26th of the month so you have three
days to do your carrots yet
um but once again these are kind of
general recommendations
if you go in any seed catalog and you
look at carrots
there’s a whole range of maturity dates
so you could pick a carrot that is a
relatively short small carrot
that’s going to mature much faster than
one that’s going to get eight inches
long
so you can kind of adjust that it’s like
oh i didn’t get my seed for that
here i can find the the nantz uh
short carrot uh only gets half that size
and
it will mature two weeks earlier than
the other ones so maybe you could go
into early august and still sew carrots
so you can kind of um uh mess with that
a little bit
to get that get that situated um
and so there are a number of other ones
that are direct sewing so like
if you look down at lettuce uh baby
lettuces and that’d be the leaf lettuces
and things like that
head lettuce you need to get in a bit
earlier um you could direct see
uh some onions so if you wanted to do
you know scallions bunions
uh parsnips it’s way too late for that
here they do have peas
listed as direct so um and here they
said that they needed to be in by july
10th
well once again as i said that’s a
challenge for us because of the heat and
they do like cool temperatures
and actually peas then are going to be
frost sensitive
so they’re going to be flowering at the
end and the flowers are very susceptible
to freezing temperatures uh and so
this is uh so look you can see here here
at the very end of august you can still
be planting spinach
and swiss chard and turnips and things
like that
so you still have to a good uh
five weeks or more for being able to
direct sow some things
or plenty of time for a lot of these
transplants to still get them out
and put them in the garden so lots more
gardening to do
most important things as i said pay
attention to your watering
because things dry out fast in these
really high temperatures
full sunny days low humidity that kind
of stuff
you know you really need to be looking
at the watering in your garden for these
young things just
setting out or direct zone twice a day
to be checking on the water so hopefully
that gives you a lot to go on
um but as i said take a look at this and
it will uh
i think be very helpful for you to see
what
what crops you can use for the fall
that’s great thanks jeff oh sure so what
about
containers betsy from wilmington asked
about what we can plant now
in containers okay so for
containers i mean so many of these you
can
um for any type of root crop
many times it’s a little bit more
challenging to do in a container just
because you don’t have as much space
in a container for for the roots to
develop so say you want to grow
uh beets or carrots or something like
that
it might be a bit more of a challenge to
do that but lettuce can do really well
um let’s see what else some things that
might get too large unless you have
really large containers
you know cabbages and um broccoli
you know that gets to be a pretty big
plant and they need a big
big root space for that so that might be
difficult
uh some kale kale is certainly fine
especially some of the smaller kales
lettuces that you could certainly do um
let’s see what else from the the list
what might be on you
be suitable onions um radishes
very easy spinach spinach and swiss
swiss chard’s a beautiful thing
i know people just grow in a container
they don’t even like swiss chard
but they grow it because it’s just such
a pretty container type of thing
um and turnips all of those would be
suitable for
growing in a container and what i always
say to people when you’re thinking about
what to plant
don’t plant something you’re not going
to eat
okay unless you just want to grow it as
an ornamental or you just like the
challenge of growing it
but there are way too many uh people
trying to get into vegetable gardening
that are growing um wrong things because
their family is not going to eat them
you know so grow would you really want
to grow
and uh since you mentioned lettuce um
someone had
asked if they can replant lettuce in the
same area
and if they do is there anything they
need to do to the soil
now actually lettuce is one of those
things it doesn’t harbor any diseases in
the soil
very easy you can plant lettuce in the
same spot every year
uh lettuce you know it takes a lot of
nitrogen for lettuce you know
because you’re eating the leafy green
and that’s just full of nitrogen
um so just pay attention to that so you
know a good thing to add if you want to
do organic gardening add some blood meal
in
blood meals very high in nitrogen you
know so that will help with that
um or good compost that type of thing
if you’re a more conventional gardener
then using a fertilizer that has a
higher bit of nitrogen
will help with that great and now
getting into some uh
specific plant questions um phyllis from
new jersey
uh said that she grows rhubarb and she
needs some information on when and how
much to harvest
and also what to do post-season is there
any fertilizing needed or dividing
okay um so rhubarb i mean great crop
and um not lots of people grow
it um i do and i struggle growing it
um because it takes a it needs a spot
that is mainly full sun
good drainage and good soil
okay it gets it gets to be a nice big
plant um
if you have too heavy of a soil or you
don’t have good drainage you’re not
going to be successful with rhubarb
okay um rhubarb has a you know big it
grows from a crown
has big clusters so either you can do
i’ve always done the dividing in the
springtime very early in the spring
when you just begin to start see growth
uh it looks like you know some some pink
colored balls right at the soil surface
it kind of looks like that
then i would dig up a clump and then
divide it down
then you probably could do it in the
fall
but um if it’s an old plant it has a
pretty thick fibrous root on it
and um i think that there would be more
of a chance for that
root to not set out that old route not
to set out new young roots
and it might even rot in the ground over
winter so i think
you know doing the late winter early
spring dividing and transplanting would
be easier
now if you have young plants and um it’s
much easier
to do but for a big old established
plant i would wait till spring
younger ones you could probably do in
the fall i would want to get them done
before
certainly by mid-october so during that
september early october time would be
good
to do it great and remember that is a
perennial plant
so really do a good job of prepping your
soil
because you’re not going to be able to
do it once you get that plant in that
you know they don’t want to be moved
around a lot
you can divide them eventually but they
don’t want to be moved around so do what
you need to for
modifying ph and getting organic matter
down in the soil and all of that kind of
thing
yeah great and uh betsy just reminded us
that if you do have an overabundance
of produce or things that you don’t eat
in your vegetable garden you can always
find a local food bank to donate
so great suggestion there so jeff what
about
peppers we heard from deborah in
delaware who said she has peppers
but they have flowers but no actual
peppers on the plant
okay um well you know with the weather
that we’ve been having
you know really really hot and sometimes
really dry
that can really affect you can have
flowers but a lot of times it’s not
going to
set fruit and you’ll just have flowers
drop off so this is a problem with some
peppers sometimes tomatoes have that
although i really haven’t seen it on my
tomatoes this year
they seem to be setting lots of fruit
but i am seeing that on some of the
peppers that i’m growing
um i had early season flowers and some
peppers forming from that
and then there’s a big part of the plant
where the flowers are there and then the
flowers just drop off
and i have even moisture in my garden
you know if we don’t have rain i’m very
good about
every other day making sure i give it a
good soaking
uh so it’s really the higher
temperatures that are preventing that
now that’s provided all of your other
things are good you did your peppers
want to be in full sun
and that you’re not letting them get
moisture stressed and all of that type
of thing
because either of those things will also
lead to not getting fruit set
also great we had lots of questions
about tomatoes everybody’s always
interested in tomatoes
um so can you talk a little bit about
training
pruning some disease that people get
around now
any suggestions really just to have
strong healthy fruitful plants
okay well hopefully you all have good
tomatoes and you’re
picking tomatoes now i started picking
about um
what maybe a week 10 days ago and i got
my tomatoes in
relatively late this year um i just
didn’t get them in
as early as i hoped to but uh but
they’re going well now
um and i’ve mainly been picking the the
smaller tomatoes now so the patio
the patio tomatoes which are like a big
plum tomato or cherry tomatoes kind of
stuff but i have some nice big slicers
that are ripening
um for for me this year
it’s been a very good tomato year so far
i see
very little disease although
in my garden i don’t grow the heirloom
type tomatoes
the true heirloom tomatoes the true
heirloom tomatoes
are are very very susceptible to
fusarium wilt verticillium wilt blight
things like that that can affect the
plant and
with those you have to have you have to
be planting them in a different spot of
the garden every year
as i said my vegetable garden uh my one
plot is not that large
at home so i don’t have a whole lot of
space to be able to rotate my crops
and tomatoes is one of the big crops
that i grow
in my household there are two of us and
i have more than
two dozen tomato plants but i end up
freezing most of them
and actually i just used my last
frozen quart of tomatoes recently and i
freeze
dozens of quarts of tomatoes um
so um so if you if you have a problem
with these diseases every year where and
so the
uh the blight that you might get would
you would see at this time of year
all the older lower leaf branches are
turning yellow with spots on them and
they’re dropping off
that is a symptom of that if you see
entire
plants dying that can be fusarium or
verticillium wilt which lasts in your
soil and see that’s the thing that’s
difficult about it
also with tomatoes with those diseases
you want to practice good sanitation
with your tomatoes so if you have leaves
that die
pick those off don’t throw those into
your compost
because those fungal spores can last in
the compost
and at the end of the season in your
tomatoes rip the plants out
okay don’t don’t chop them up and let
them stay in the vegetable garden and i
don’t put those
in my compost okay if you had really
really good composting operation where
you got really high temperatures it
would kill all those
mine is just a passive one and and i use
some of that material back in the
vegetable garden
so i don’t want to risk it
so so sanitation is very very important
with tomatoes
another thing that’s really important is
make sure you do even
watering you know we’ve had this dry
weather
we had you know heavy rain last night we
had heavy rain a week and a half ago
but it’s all dry that time in between if
that’s all the more that the tomatoes
got
um tomatoes have an issue
that you’ll you’ll get young fruit when
it’s
forming if it is misshapen and they call
it cat faced
so kind of is a misshapen you’ll have a
sunken part
that might be black on part of it it’s
called cat face
fruit it’s perfectly fine to eat but it
really doesn’t develop well into a nice
round or globe shaped fruit
that’s really due to a calcium problem
but it’s due to uneven water take up in
the plant
so if you say okay i’m not going to
water the tomatoes today or tomorrow and
the plants get really
water stressed and then you water them
out a lot of water
they either have a lot of water or none
at all
that’s what can lead to this problem
because the plants need to have this
even
uptake of minerals nutrients from the
soil
and if it’s all variable like that then
it’s very difficult for the plants and
you get this misshapen fruit
okay so that’s uh that’s kind of one of
the the big things kind of related to
that
so that’s more of a physiological
problem due to watering so what you can
either do is make sure that you
are watering regularly okay
and so the plants don’t get into
moisture stress i’m not saying
keep the soil soggy wet but you know
like what i’m doing
in this heat uh in dry weather every
other day
i would water the plants and so it might
begin to dry a little bit and then i’m
adding water it might begin to dry a
little bit and then i’m adding water
it’s not these huge fluctuations the
other thing is using a mulch
under the plants that helps to even the
moisture out so you don’t get so much
evaporation coming from the soil
and what i always used to do for my
tomatoes
i would grow peas in the spring okay and
then
the peas would be finishing up in one
part of the garden
so i’d rip out the pea vines and i would
just throw those underneath my young
tomato plants and at that point you know
the tomato plants were only you know a
foot high or so
but they would essentially be the mulch
underneath the tomato plants
and by the end of the season those vines
have disintegrated so you don’t even see
that it’s viny anymore
and then that just becomes part of the
garden soil so it’s a way of
very passively composting right on a
soil surface but using that as
the mulch okay um
yeah so those are a couple of the big
things about tomatoes
uh you know if you look at seed catalogs
there are hybrid tomatoes
that you’ll see that are resistant to
fusarium and verticillium so those are
the ones that i have to use
and actually on the market now are some
of the heirloom types so they have those
heirloom tomato
look and taste and growth but they are
hybrid so they have incorporated
in that resistance to those diseases
which they’ve done through
traditional plant breeding methods and
so
you know that could give you an option
if every year you have a problem with
diseases
um i really don’t have much of a problem
with
insects on tomatoes i mean occasionally
someone can see a hor
tomato hornworm um you know there’s the
big green ones have that big hook on the
back
side of them uh that’s just kind of an
unusual thing they might get
um they can get white fly but that white
fly is usually more of a problem
if you’re growing tomatoes in a
greenhouse and if you’re growing them
outside
because we have so many natural
predators for other things that might be
on tomatoes
yeah if anyone has any specific insect
problem
post it in the chat and we’ll we can
discuss it but i really have very very
few
on my tomatoes um and remember if you’re
tuned in to when we talked about
vegetables before for tomatoes i talked
about the two different broad groups so
determinate and indeterminate
determinate tomatoes tend to all
fruit and flour and fruit all the fruit
will ripen around the same time
indeterminate will keep growing so
they’ll keep flowering and fruiting
flowering and fruit and flowering
fruiting
and right actually it was last night
before the rain
i topped off my tomatoes so i have mine
on a trellis that’s up
seven feet high and i had the shoots
going up above that for my indeterminate
tomatoes
so i cut them off at that point because
in reality
you know those that are that high up uh
till they flower
that fruits will be ripening really
really late and they just get too top
heavy
so i’d rather keep the growth down lower
right and the way that those
indeterminate ones grow
you know that you get those flower
clusters very near the base of the plant
those ripen first
and then they’ll just keep doing that
going higher and higher and higher and
higher
up the tree not the plant
very good um so moving on to
broccoli susan in delaware said she has
a broccoli plant that has a tiny
broccoli head will it grow is it okay
okay well there are cultivars of
broccoli now
that the the flower part of it will just
be
small like this if you’ve ever grown you
know
traditional broccoli before you tend to
get this big
central uh cluster
and actually those are the flower buds
so this head of broccoli like that
and if you cut that off then you’ll get
side shoots of these small
little ones and they have a broccoli now
that all it does are the side
little shoots that come up uh so
typically
yes i mean if you have a good healthy
plant it starts relatively small
and that that stock will get bigger and
bigger
now if you haven’t grown broccoli before
you have to be very careful in watching
it
because you don’t want to it can’t stay
on there forever like that
because eventually those little green
buds in that head of broccoli
will start to open up it’ll be yellow
flowers and that’s when it’s gone
too far you don’t want to let it flower
like that
so it’s a little somewhat of a difficult
question for me to ask because
it kind of depends on the size of the
plant you know
is it a big full full looking plant
if it is and you just have a tiny head
and it’s not getting any bigger
okay something’s happened there because
it really should be
normal sized broccoli head okay
so hopefully that helps a little bit for
what you should look for
yeah uh and a follow-up to the tomato
plants
um someone mentioned that they have been
burnt in the recent heat wave no new
tomatoes seem to be growing
is there anything i can do to help them
out it’s a healthy
green leaves on the plant but they don’t
seem to be very productive
right right and you know like i say you
know i haven’t seen that so much on mine
um but that can be a problem where we
get really high temperatures
and the flowers just uh they will not
form fruit
okay so um all the best thing you can do
is just make sure that you just keep
even watering
um and you know it’s a very very subtle
subtle difference so we’ve had some days
where the temperature has been high
and very low humidity and that’s pretty
difficult on the tomato flowers
we can have high temperatures but if
there’s higher humidity then
the fruit will still set okay
so the next few days are supposed to be
very humid so you might be in luck it’ll
still be hot but it’ll be very humid
so you might be in luck just pay
attention to making sure the plants have
even watering
underneath them uh so that they don’t
have any water stress
okay because they’re trying to deal
enough with the high temperatures
yeah great
um rachel said she’s recently learned
that she should prune tomatoes
cucumbers squash and pepper plants to a
single liter stem
do you do this or any tips um
i do not do it at all to my cucumbers
or squash or peppers
actually for what what i’m for my
peppers that i’m growing this year i’m
growing
serrano poblano jalapeno
and then the typical bell peppers
and one of the things that i found best
you’ve all probably seen
these tomato cages which are just it’s a
welded wire
kind of gray galvanized and it’s three
rings so a larger one on the top and a
smaller one a smaller one
and then three steaks well if you’ve
ever used those on tomatoes they’re
worthless
because they’re just too light and
flimsy and they’re not nearly tall
enough for tomatoes
but for me they’re perfect for the
peppers to hold the peppers together
because i usually have to stake my
peppers because they get big and then we
have a heavy thunderstorm and it’s going
to break branches
or the fruit’s going to weigh down the
branches going to break out
so i don’t do any trimming of them
tomatoes
i do side shoot removal
okay so what that is and i kind of know
the types of tomatoes i grow
and my favorite tomato to grow is a
paste type tomato
called uh juliet and it will send up
lots of side shoots so i i plan you know
the initial plant
and very early on it will start sending
up side shoots
in the axle of where the leaf meets the
stem it’ll send up another side shoot
i will let maybe two maybe three of
those side shoots grow and i try to
pinch out all of the other ones
if not i would just have a tangled
jungle
and it’s too many flowers and fruit for
the one root system of the plant so the
fruit would just be getting smaller and
smaller and smaller
so i do try to do that kind of stuff but
there are some
if you want larger tomatoes if you’re
growing you know the bee steak type and
big slicers and whatever
if you do a job of pruning and removing
all of the side shoots
you’re going to get fewer fruit but it’s
going to be larger
i’m perfectly fine with having a tomato
that’s only this big i don’t need to
have something that is a pound and a
half tomato
right so it really depends on what it is
that you’re
after if you want big big fruit yes
do pruning of them and basically it’s
removing those side shoots and keeping a
single stop growing up
that would have leaves and then clusters
of fruit coming out from it
but no other side shoots on it yeah so
it all just depends on what you’re after
great and janet said that she’s having
a problem with some bugs chewing off her
seedlings right after they emerge
questions okay so if if you’re sure it’s
insects because
you know rabbits are the worst for
doing this and because what they want is
they want those really tender young
shoots coming up and not everything you
know they’ll go after certain things
before others
you know you can’t grow you can’t grow
beans or
red beets or sometimes lettuce peas
rabbits just love those things okay
so if you’re sure it’s not rabbits um
other things it could be doing it at
that time sometimes
birds will they come in your garden
they’ll just you know pick off
the they don’t even really eat it
they’re just breaking that top off
just like they just want to be
destructive to you
and other things you you can with some
things have cut worms
uh cutworms are usually more of a
problem on things
in their cucurbits so like cucumbers
squash
pumpkins watermelon that kind of stuff
uh that
you know just on the stem when they tend
to be very young
they’ll just chew it off on that young
stem
and affects it there so it kind of
depends on
what it is you know that you’re that
you’re growing and what
what your potential problem might be i
have one issue at home this year that i
have never
ever had an issue with before i know i
have
rabbits in my area even though i have
two dogs we have foxes in the
neighborhood but we
have plenty of rabbits around there’s
plenty of cover for them and i’d like to
grow
bush beans as i said before and so
i have a make a big deal about you know
my bush being plot every year
i keep picking them every day and i can
keep harvesting those plants for four or
five weeks and get lots of beans out of
them
um my first crop this year and i plant
them in an area where i have
is completely secure with a rabbit fence
and and this
is on the bottom part of the fence it’s
tiny little holes that rabbits cannot
get in
and the bottom of the fence goes right
into the soil so there’s no way a rabbit
can get into it
i had all of these came up i had the
cotyledon leaves and the first set of
true leaves
and then just starting at one end going
down the row and multiple rows
just chewing the tops off the i want to
know if anyone else is having that
problem
so i planted a second crop
they matured a little bit more same
thing happening there
i know it can’t be rabbits the only
thing i can think that it might be are
chipmunks
now i’ve never seen a chipmunk in there
doing i’ve never seen anything in the
plot eating these but it’s happening
and someone a friend who vegetable
garden said that
he has seen chipmunks doing that so his
recommendation was to put dried blood on
it
well i’m doing that but you really have
to do it every day
because if you miss a day then that’s
when they go in there
because you know the the this odor the
smell would break down a little bit in
the dried blood
so please anyone if anyone else is
having a problem let me know and let me
know what you found
betsy’s having white flies on the
underside of her leaves of kale
and cabbage anything yeah
um so kale and cabbage um they
they can be a little bit more of a
challenge for some insects
okay not so much diseases if you have
good calcium in your soil they’re fine
um so it means decent ph but
any of the uh crucifers so that’d be
broccoli
cauliflower brussels sprouts kale
cabbage all those things they have more
insect problems so you can have the
cabbage looper
which is a green caterpillar and then
that develops into
that kind of small white little
butterfly
so you see the butterflies fluttering
around you think oh that’s nice
pollinators are there well what they’re
doing is they’re going over and they’re
laying the eggs
on your cabbage and your broccoli and
your brussels sprouts
there are organic uh organic products to
use
uh so like bt bacillus thuringiensis and
some other things like that
you can use for protecting your plants
um
usually i just kind of grin and bear it
and
pick off you know if some leaves have
lots of them on it i picked those off
usually it’s on the older leaves
and it tends to be a relatively short
season of those insects being such a
problem
and what i have found is planning them
in the spring
you’re going into that time period of
late spring and early summer and there
are lots of those insects doing that
so i i would just have a really
difficult time trying to grow broccoli
and cauliflower and kale in the spring
without getting just completely riddled
by insects
so for me i always had much more success
by planting the transplants in summer
and going into a fall crop
the only thing i ever really had a
problem with fall crop were black aphids
on kale
and that if you just hose with aphids
you just hose them off with a strong
strong stream of water and do that every
few days
it’s pretty good control for the kale
because i really don’t like to use
any kind of pesticide whether it’s an
organic product or not
uh but there are there are some uh safe
materials you can use for helping to
control
insects on those yeah great
uh should we still be fertilizing our
tomatoes
uh if they are indeterminate tomatoes uh
it will it will help um
for me you know i use uh um i put the
organic fertilizer down
at the time of transplanting i have
compost in the soil
on my tomatoes i have decent soil i
usually don’t do any more fertilizing
once they get going
if they’re growing good and well then
that’s fine usually
i have too much vigorous growth on my
tomatoes anyway
so i really don’t need to do any more
fertilizing if anything i would just top
dress them with some more compost
yeah and any thoughts for
uh basil having yellow leaves oh yeah
yeah
basil so that’s another one of my
mainstay crops because if i don’t have
tubs of pesto in my freezer for the
winter i get nervous
um so the past couple of years
basil has been a real challenge and it
gets to be the plants are just
up looking big you’re getting all these
shoots and i’m very
very uh religious about picking off the
flowering stalks before they flower
because i just want the stems with all
the leaves on them
and as soon as you begin to let basil
begin to flower like that
then you’re not going to get the new
shoots coming out for producing more
leaves
and that’s what you want with basil you
don’t want the flower stock you want the
leaves
so keep picking those out and it would
just get to that point of being a really
nice size plant
and i would see that the lower leaves
would start turning kind of a brownish
yellow
and then the leaves would just drop off
and i had grown
basil for years and never had a problem
and this just started
maybe three or four years ago and what
it is
is downy mildew so this is mildew that’s
on the underside of the leaf
and it just causes the leaf to turn
yellow and the leaf just drops off
and i’ve had this where i’ve seen it get
started in basil
and within two weeks all of the plants
were just defoliated
and so you’re just like letting them get
to that certain point and it’s like okay
i’m going to cut and make a big
batch of basil and freeze it or a big
batch of pesto and freeze it
and you lost them all because as soon as
those leaves are turning yellow
you don’t want to cook with them so the
what i did for for several years
i have been trying to get seed of the
downy mildew resistant so rutgers
university in new jersey developed
some cultivars of mildew resistant basil
and i finally got seeds from johnny’s
this year
actually i ordered two different types
uh they had
issues with shipping uh early in the
season because of covid
and you know not having a workforce and
all of this kind of stuff but i did get
some
that was late to get them seeded but
they’re all doing fine now my plants are
up like that
and they are um mildew resistant
uh so that’s exclusively what i’m
growing now
because now unfortunately i there’s only
one place i was looking this
spring when i where i found mildew
resistant
basil plants for sale the transplants
for sale all the other places
were just selling traditional
old-fashioned
uh italian basil geneves basil
but they’re not mildew resistant and i
just wasn’t going to get those
so that’s what i would recommend
unfortunately it’s not going to help you
this year
but if you’re starting to see it be
vigilant about removing those
infected leaves maybe the younger growth
will still be okay
you probably don’t shouldn’t let it on a
plant as long
and my friend who is the vegetable
gardener that told me about the
chipmunks on the beans
also said his downy mildew resistant
basil he’s starting to see
some in it it’s resistant not immune
so it means it could get it in a bad
year um
but i knock on wood i haven’t seen it in
my home garden yet
right yeah and so what about towards the
end of the season
as we look at uh you know we’ve
harvested and everything
what should we be doing for the soil
should we be amending it
is there any sort of cover crops we
should be looking at how should we plan
for next year
okay um well you know i think one of the
things to think about
are what crops might you have in your
garden that you want to keep over winter
and a lot of this is hit or miss and it
depends on what kind of winter we have
like if you had some late sewn spinach
that really
didn’t get very big at all or you just
harvested a little bit off of it
leave it in the garden for the winter
put a few oak leaves around
it don’t completely cover it because
they’ll rot
they’ll look awful over winter you start
getting those couple of warm days at the
end of winter and early spring
and you’ll get some green leaves coming
up that you can harvest
now those plants will be very quick to
send up their flower stalks to bolt
but you can still eat them very early
spring much earlier than
the new plants that you’d be starting
next spring from seed to do that
and actually there was one year when i
had kale
you know nice big plants of kale uh you
know three feet tall or four feet tall
in the garden at winter and they still
because i would just leave them out and
one that’s another crop that
you can get hard frost the leaves are
all wilted by afternoon you’re perfectly
fine so i’m still harvesting
and all of that and i just left the
plants there
with this rosette of leaves way up on
top of these bare stalks
uh they lasted through the winter and in
the spring
they sent up uh what was going to be the
flower
so it looked kind of like a very very
small broccoli
but it was coming up from kale and i
picked those
it was 10 times better than broccoli
i’ve never had such a wonderful thing so
kind of had the
flavor of kale but it kind of looked
like these mini heads of broccoli
i don’t know why someone’s not growing
this commercially well i do know why
you can have a bad winter and the plants
are just going to completely die because
it’s going to be too cold
um but i thought that was a great thing
to do um
but most of the vegetable garden usually
what you want to do for most of the
crops
because you know if it’s any kind of um
solanaceous plant so the solanaceas
plant would be things like
potatoes tomatoes eggplant that type of
thing
peppers those you want to remove
all bits and traces of those that you
can so when you’re removing them if you
pull them up and the roots come out
great you probably want to remove those
roots
because all of those can have some soil
some diseases in the plant that will
last in the soil
so removing the dead leaves all of that
kind of stuff
that that’s very very helpful for that
things like you know
lettuce or red beets or um
onions or some of those other things
like that any of the greens that we were
talking about
if any of that matters left on the
garden
that that’s fine i don’t worry about it
you know i usually turn
turn the soil over and that type of
thing the other thing you’ll be thinking
about is say you have a crop that
finishes up in september or october
you’re not going to plant anything else
in that space
seed in a bit of a cover crop if you go
to any of the seed resource places
they’re all different types of cover
crop so you can be planting clover you
can be planting
winter rye or winter wheat or something
like that
that will you want to get enough of
growth before we get freezing weather
so it’s going to basically hold your
soil and protect your soil in the winter
and then in late winter early spring you
turn it over in your soil and so
the best way for adding organic matter
into your soil
you know adding adding compost to your
soil you’re just putting a little layer
on it
but when you have plants growing in
there like that you’re going to turn in
not only do you have the top part but
you have all that root system that
you’re going to turn in also
so i always try to do cover crops in
parts of my garden
as a crop comes out and i’m not going to
plant anything else in the fall and i
have enough of time to get something
established in there
that’s an excellent way to to help your
soil through the winter
the other thing during the winter that’s
usually when you want to do any liming
so if your ph is getting too low and you
need to add lime
put that on in the winter time because
it takes a while for that lime to
react in the soil and to actually make
its way down in the soil
so you have the winter rains and snows
and frost cracking and all that
so that calcium of the lime can get down
in the soil and then it needs to react
in with those soil particles
so those are the types of things that i
try to do in winter
and usually for much of my garden i have
a couple of oak trees around
i mow the lawn chop up the leaves bag
them and i just throw a layer of that
over the rest of the garden where i’m
not going to do a cover crop
so that holds the soil and then i just
turn that in in the spring so it’s a way
of adding some organic
matter into yeah great
well thank you jeff for sharing your
knowledge with our members uh it’s hard
to believe
but the hour is uh about up
um hopefully everyone’s as excited as i
am to get back out there and keep the
garden going for the next couple months
um any parting words or or thoughts you
wanted to share with people before we
wrap up
um yeah don’t give up we always have
some challenges and things that don’t
work out in the garden but we always
have some nice surprises too
for some reason my cilantro this year is
wonderful
and it’s not bolding you know it’s a
slower
slower to bolt variety and it’s like oh
my god i found a new discovery
because my issue always was i’d have
cilantro in your only part of the summer
and i want it when i have tomatoes
and so they never really overlap so
that’s working but
you know my beans are a bust this year
and i’m really disappointed about that
so
so we always have some uh some
challenges every year in the garden
the weather is different every year and
uh oh
and with this picture like you see
behind me go to your local
farmers markets uh you know i grow all
of these vegetables i usually have a
plot here at the college i usually have
a plot at home
and i go to a farmer’s market every week
we eat lots of fruits and vegetables
it’s the best way to see different sorts
of things what they’re growing what’s
coming in season now
and all of that kind of stuff so do
support your local farmers markets
great and i know there were a lot of
questions that came through
and unfortunately we weren’t able to get
to all of them
make sure you check out some additional
resources that are out there
penn state extension office across the
com
commonwealth has hotlines and they have
master gardeners
and staff available to answer questions
and it’s a really
great resource out there uh the recorded
version of today’s presentation will be
posted to our website on the ask the
expert page
and that’s the same area where you can
access the other
webinars that we’ve had as well those
recordings
so thank you again to jeff and to all of
our members who joined us today
we hope you learned something new uh
we’re grateful for your engagement and
your support
and we look forward to seeing you in the
garden soon
thanks everyone i’m gonna go home
tonight and make some pickles
i have a lot of cucumbers and i need to
start pickles
you